There are many prior art smoke or heat detectors of all types, and it is documented that the use of these detectors saves lives as a result of an early warning of a fire condition. However, despite the use of smoke or heat detectors, many lives still are lost in fires due to smoke inhalation and burns. Tragically, this is particularly true for small children.
Annually, four to five thousand persons lose their lives in the United States as a result of an estimated half-million residential fires. Residential fires account for seventy-eight percent of all fire deaths in the United States and occur every sixty-six seconds. An additional twenty to thirty thousand other persons are injured in those fires. Statistics demonstrate that children younger than five years of age are twice as likely to die in a fire than the rest of the population. Each year 1,200 children age 0-14 die in residential fires with more than sixty percent of these children being under the age of five with 11,400 other children being injured. Each day, an average of three children die in a residential fire.
It is well established that the risk of dying in a fire is cut in haft in a home with a working smoke detector. Close to ninety percent of children die in home fires where working smoke detectors were not present. However, ten percent of the child deaths occur in home fires where the homes had a working smoke detector. Despite the abundance of smoke detectors and smoke alarms on the market in the United States, and in the homes of young children, approximately 120 children die at home each year needlessly. Many of these children die not as a result of a malfunctioning or non-functioning smoke alarm and detector but rather due to "their reactions to fire." (National Safe Kids Campaign.) Children do not commonly or instinctively know to leave a burning building even at the sounding of the conventional smoke or fire detectors. In fact, the loud warning given by available smoke and heat warning systems may contribute to a child's fear and inability to adequately respond to a dangerous situation.
All too often it is reported that a child has died as a result of hiding under a bed or in a closet believing that he is safe from the fire or that he can control the fire. The Safe Kids Campaign specifically suggests that "younger children are afraid of the very things and people that could save them . . . the sound of the smoke detector, fire alarm or fire engine sirens can scare children. Often children will not leave with the firefighter--waiting instead for their parents to rescue them." (Emphasis added). In a critical fire situation, each second counts: an entire home can be engulfed in flames in five minutes; it only takes three minutes for a room to "flashover," or get so hot that it bursts into flames; and inhaling very hot air just once can cause severe lung damage. Time is critical and children need to respond correctly to a fire alarm warning immediately. Confusion, fear, or inaction often results in severe injuries and can be lethal.
Although smoke and heat detectors currently available perform a great service in alerting most adults to the danger of a fire, the mere sounding of an alarm or horn cannot sufficiently protect young children and the elderly or other adults who do not comprehend the significance of an alarm signal, who do not understand what to do in response to an alarm signal, or who become panicky and react erroneously or irrationally to an alarm signal.
Essentially all smoke and heat detectors currently used in residential homes emit a loud, shrieking alarm designed to command the attention of everyone within hearing of the device. Alarm signals, however, provide nothing more in the way of information useful for exiting the structure, avoiding injury, or preventing death. Moreover, the very nature of alarm signals currently used, i.e., loud shrill horns or buzzers, while often effective for most adults, frequently serves only to scare, confuse, and panic small children and the elderly. Thus, a major problem associated with small children's and elderly adults' ability to comprehend the meaning of an alarm signal, to understand what to do in response to an alarm signal, and to correctly react to an alarm signal, is the alarm signal itself. A smoke or heat detector and alarm system that transmits merely a loud tone alone is not optimal or even sufficient for the protection of small children and elderly or other adults who are easily confused by such alarms.
There has been a long-felt need for a smoke or heat detector and alarm for home use that is effective for adults, the elderly and particularly small children, one which provides verbal warning messages and/or instructions for these individuals to follow. The continued injury and mortality of small children in fires, despite the existence and use of currently available smoke detectors, demonstrates this need. U.S. Pat. No. 4,754,266 to Shand et al. describes a traffic director that transmits audio exit cues to occupants of a structure in response to the detection of a fire condition. The disclosed device, however, provides no means for recording personalized vocal messages from a parent or guardian directed to a small child or adult containing specific instructions on how to respond to detected fire condition. U.S. Pat. No. 4,904,983 to Mitchell discloses a movable vehicle alarm system for detecting and deterring theft of automotive tape recorders.
An effective residential smoke or heat detector and alarm should be simple, reliable, economical, compact, and easy to install. It should transmit an alarm signal that readily alerts small children to fire danger and conveys simple instructions that small children can understand easily and to which they are likely to respond. A small child most easily understands, and is most likely to respond to, the voice and instructions of his or her parents or other trusted adult.
There is a need, therefore, for a reliable, inexpensive and easy-to-install smoke or heat detector and alarm capable of recording a familiar adult's verbal warning message and instructions to a small child and transmitting that warning message and instructions as part of an alarm signal in response to the detection of a fire condition. Such a system would provide unique warning messages and instructions that are specifically suited for small children, and would increase the likelihood that small children would understand and correctly respond to the alarm signal, thus saving more small children from tragic, untimely, and unnecessary death due to fire and smoke inhalation.